Maps & Apps

We invite you to chart your own course through the city keeping an eye out for art in unexpected places. Art gives shape to Seattleʼs urban fabric. Since 1973, Seattle has proudly supported this endeavor with its 1% for Art program. Venture into Seattleʼs many neighborhoods and find other engaging works of art. The cityʼs collection includes more than 400 permanent public artworks. Enjoy your journey. We hope you are inspired, delighted and challenged along the way.

Discover Public Art with your smARTphone

The Office of Arts & Culture maintains a public art app for Seattle's permanently installed collection. The app is called STQRY (pronounced "story") and is available on iOS, Android and Windows 8 operating systems for free.

A major benefit to this particular app is that a number of local art organizations and arts agencies are using it including 4Culture, ArtsWA (Washington state's collection), City of Redmond (public art and events), City of Kent (public art), City of Sammamish (public art, parks, facilities), and Renton History Museum (exhibits and City of Renton public art). And there are more agencies and organizations to come.

The app will help you locate new works of art via a GPS system that can tell you what's nearby, and also has a QR (hence the "qr" in STQRY) code scanner, so you can find out more about a work of art that you happen upon. Information includes a history, artist statement, and historic images and video when available.

Get the app

View online

Public Art Maps

This downloadable series of maps provides the opportunity to explore the artistic wonders of downtown Seattle and its neighborhoods. The maps include public art from city, county and state collections as well as corporate artworks, community gardens, significant architecture and other cultural surprises. Individual sites were chosen for aesthetic significance, cultural interest and variety of routes.

Our city offers so much to see that we can't list every artwork that you will encounter. However, we invite you to click on a tour or neighborhood, print the map and legend, and explore.

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Browse the Collection

The collection includes more than 400 permanently sited and integrated works. Artworks are commissioned through a public process. Panels comprised of professional visual artists along with community and city representatives evaluate the artist applicants. The city stewards and maintains its artworks through an ongoing program of coordinated conservation activities, which include inspections, major restorative work and routine maintenance.

The city's Portable Works Collection is a rotating collection of nearly 3,000 artworks in all media, representing hundreds of artists collected by the city since 1973. The collection includes sculpture, painting, mixed media, prints, photography and textiles.

Temporary Projects

ARTS, in partnership with the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT), commissioned seven emerging public artists to create temporary art installations along the New Rainier Valley Neighborhood Greenway.

Four artists have been commissioned to create temporary interventions in the Seattle Center Poetry Garden to call attention to the unique character of the site, a space designed to ask visual artists to draw inspiration from the written word.

Current Shows in our Galleries

March 2 - May 1, 2018The paintings and photos in this exhibit give voice to youth in our communities who want to have a public dialog about mass incarceration and abolition. Their creativity seeks answers to the questions: How can we create a society healthy enough that we do not need prisons? What does it mean to be free?

Thru December 14, 2017A four-exhibition series in which artists and artist teams develop artistic projects on the topic of homelessness. Each two-month exhibition in the city’s Seattle Presents Gallery will demonstrate artists thinking expansively about what shelter and stability mean to diverse populations, and examining the systemic causes of homelessness